Monster Tactics 3.01

10 Screenshots

About This File

Welcome to Ivalice! This isn't the same Ivalice you may have remembered from Vanilla FFT. So forget *almost* everything you thought you knew. Many changes have been made, not only to the battles themselves, but to the mechanics of the game.
Human population has been mysteriously dying out, and monsters have taken over. You can no longer hire human units, but you can recruit monsters for free in random battles. Monsters are now dangerous - they are no longer the pathetic counter bots of vanilla. Every monster has a minimum of 4 skills, and several have far more than that. Monsters also now have greatly improved innates, including several r/s/m abilities, innate status, status/elemental resistances, etc.
Due to several changes in the mod, it's a lot tougher than vanilla FFT. Most notable changes that lead to its new difficulty are the improved monsters and enemy formations in general, the enemy scaling to the party level, and shenanigans in general. If this is your first time playing a FFT mod, don't give up! It can be tough to learn at first because it's something you're not used to. Encounters have been balanced to help break bad habits taught from vanilla. If you're a vet from another mod/vanilla challenge runs, the AI hasn't been changed so you can still abuse it in many of the same ways.

The #1 advice I can give any player starting out on the mod is to tooltips everything. (Press the help button over anything you want to tooltips) Literally, everything that is possible to be tooltipped (with the exception of skillset names which I'm not too sure what to put there except maybe flavor text later) now has a tooltips that tells you what you need to know. All moves have relevant flags listed. All items list the item's effect. Class/monster names list innates and where you can get them if they're recruitable. All tooltips that were wrong in vanilla have been corrected (including zodiac signs and things no longer relevant to the game). Named characters have a quote - some drop hints, while some aren't exactly serious... Many of these flags/effects/innates have been changed from vanilla so when in doubt, check the tooltips. If you see any inconsistencies in what is written on a tooltips and what something's actual effect is, let me know immediately!

The #2 advice I can give any player starting out is to pay attention to everything. Things that you might have not paid attention to before, such as the CT bar, how many turns an attack takes to charge, status weaknesses, etc. become relevant in the game. Paying deep attention to stuff like how reflect and silence affects the AI, which units have a way to revive, CT on just about anything, etc. will help you learn both the AI and the basic mechanics of the game faster.

1. Beginning battle is now short and basically free for an experienced player. Enemy healing has been reduced significantly, so now nothing on this battle on the enemy side can directly revive. There is still some HP healing and reraise, but for the most part the formation is pretty easy to shut down in mid charge.

2. Due to the change in how randomized abilities work (random abilities out of everything with a couple exceptions and not just learned abilities), human enemies have presets now. This prevents situations from popping up such as an enemy receiving Blade Grasp/Runic/Concealment before the player gets the tools to deal with it, and "death" combos like MP Switch and Move MP up or HP restore and Sturdy from appearing early.

3. Silent Lucidity now has -1 AOE, +1 vertical, +1 CT, MP Cost, and is blocked by silence. This is still a bitch to deal with but it's no longer as overwhelming.

4. Starting positions at Golgorand have changed. This prevents the player from having to get first turn on an 8 speed formation (which requires Butterknife, Fast Hat, or Excalibur), grinding for specific abilities on Agrias to make her almost unkillable, or picking 2 characters to die right in the start. This fight is still tough for its portion of the game, but it's now more fair because the player could spread out in a way that certain skills won't hit 2 characters on the first turn. As can seen in the picture below, the 2 characters who were formerly under the bridge are now on the left and the box they can be placed in is a little larger.

User Feedback

I just streamed a bit of this on my Twitch channel and I have to say if you love vanilla FFT and are looking for a fresh take on the game with some considerable challenge, you owe it to yourself to play this mod.